Should getting life assurance be this painful?

jayjay2910

ah ah , now i can provide someone else with advice after all the useful help i have rec'd on these fourms. i work for Aviva in their life and penison department and i have to say that there is no standard timescale for processing an appilcation, due to the various factors, such as medical information, and the need to do underwriting, and that Gp's take an age to send back reuqested medical information, as for your question about blood test i agree with roxy13, phone them tell them you have recently had blood test carried out, and they will contact your doctor to get the results , this is easier for us a company and cuts out paperwork and cost for us.

and as you have disclosed high blood pressure, we have to investiage this further for us to provide an accurate quote to you, and minimsie the risk of a claim being rejected for non disclourse.

We offer two types of appilcation, a short app which is 5 questions and is pretty much proccessed straight away, them we have a long app with is a fair chunck of a rain forset and ask's about everything.

Money_Saving_Dude

What an erudite and gracious bunch you lot are. You've made it easy for me to reset my expectations.

I thank you all for your time and am glad I asked the question (instead of raising my blood pressure even higher moaning about bureaucracy).

roxy13

If you need any more advice at any stage throughout the process i would be happy to help where i can. Just PM me

kingstreet

roxy13 wrote: »

If you need any more advice at any stage throughout the process i would be happy to help where i can. Just PM me

roxy - what's the difference on costs these days?

If you had a choice of a PMAR or a nurse visit to undertake a blood test, which costs less?

ACG

Drs reports are about £90 arnt they? Although i have known some to charge well over £100. It was about 6 months ago i left FP so it could have changed since then.

roxy13

kingstreet-It is definitely cheaper to get a nurse to undertake a blood test and medical exam than get a PMAR. However, the evidence that we request totally depends on the disclosure. In the last 4 years there has been a definite change in the way we underwrite and we have moved away from full doctors reports as they are usually not very helpful and expensive and moved towards targeted reports (1 specific subject) which is obtained from the GP. If someone has raised blood pressure or cholesterol or is very overweight then a medical exam with blood tests is usually the way forward. If someone has had a stroke or has diabetes then a targeted report is what we would go for. Its quite a complicated process and takes years before you are a fully competent underwriter.
I have to also point out that if we can take a customers disclosure without requesting evidence then we will where possible. We dont want to inconvenience customers by making them go for exams or wait longer for reports to be received and every step of the way we have to note down why we are doing what we are doing and are audited to within an inch of our lives !!
ACG- yes thats about the going rate for a doctors report at the moment, however they can charge whatever they feel they should. This is where we then look at the amount we are underwriting and the disclosure and see whether its worth getting the evidence or not.

kingstreet

Blimey. Last time I sent out a PMAR request, the fee was £23.50.

In my defence, I did start young and I'm "only" 45 now!